The materials from the personal records by the Soviet era writer Nikolai Ognev (Mikhail Rozanov)

Abstract

The “Archive” rubric of this volume is built around the materials from the personal records by the Soviet era writer Nikolai Ognev (Mikhail Rozanov). The documents found in his personal records include materials that reflect on the author’s process of creating his novella, The Diary of a Communist Schoolboy. His personal notes and reflections demonstrate the struggle of a creative individual to fit the ideological demands of the time into a form suitable for children. Ognev’s problems with the literature of “social order”, and his attempts to fit his personal beliefs into the Procrustean bed of the socialist realist aesthetics are evident from these materials. An important context that assists in our contemporary understanding of this particular process of literary creation is provided through supplementary documents, such as the school’s newspaper Sparkle that was published by the new type of school commune where the writer worked, and the reprint of E. Kirpichnikova’s article in the professional journal Messenger of Enlightenment from 1922 with the comment on school experimentations later described in Ognev’s novel. The articles that follow these archival materials continue to address the impact of the novel, its plot, and the main characters.